Friday, December 26, 2014

I love Winter Wonderland, for me it is completely worth the crowds and the queuing and the expense to go and get a cup of mulled wine and feel completely Christmassy. However, I learnt the hard way this time around, whatever you do, do not attempt to go as part of a crowd.

This isn't even all of us that were there. Know why? Because it's impossible to stay together. It's just too busy. Four maximum is my recommendation, because, before everyone got there, it was just a little group of four and that was tricky enough!

I grabbed lunch from here...it was OK but I don't really recommend it unfortunately. After some food and a little jaunt on the rollercoaster, we hit the arcade games!

Getting my Catniss on!

They're all left-handed bows...otherwise I'm sure we would have all destroyed this game.

No trip to Wonderland is complete without a drink on the carousel bar! I love it so so much!

Monday, December 22, 2014

Did you know you could do yoga in the Shard? I definitely didn't until I saw a deal on Amazon Local. Yogasphere hold these classes early every Saturday and on an occasional Sunday evening. I grabbed one of my few yoga-doing friends, and headed 69 floors up and grabbed a mat with a view.

The class started with a fairly long relaxation and meditation phase - which was fun as we were facing the view for part of it.

The class itself was fine. I haven't done yoga on a regular basis for a long time but I would say I've had better classes. But I went mostly for the novelty of doing yoga in the Shard, and, fortunately. They leave you time after the class to take as many pictures as you want - which Kiran and I took full advantage of!

I don't think I'd do the Shard class again - it was for me definitely a novelty venue, but if you find a deal on Amazon Local or elsewhere it is worth a go!

Monday, December 15, 2014

It was over a year ago that Fiona and I went to a Forza Win event - I spoke about it here, so when Fi told me they were doing a Winter event, involving melted cheese, no less, I got tickets pretty sharpish! Unlike the previous rooftop event, this one was held in a kind of warehouse and as such, the temperature was a little different.

Luckily they furnished us with hot cocktails!

And, once everyone was seated, it got a bit warmer.

Wine was poured, and we waited eagerly for the food.

And then the cheese arrived.

A big saucepan of fonduta was placed on our table, away from us which upset us no end, but luckily, the girls on the table were very friendly and happily poured us (several) bowls of cheese throughout the evening. Now, fonduta is not like regular fondu (which is cheese and white wine), but I believe it is Italian cheese which is soaked in milk and melted with cream. It essentially makes for a very delicious, rich, flavoursome melted bowl of cheese. We received risotto balls to dunk in them.

They were amazing...actually my favourite part of the meal. So good!

Stuffed squash! We also got roast pork and potatoes, but I must have been busy eating it because there are no pictures I'm afraid. Come dessert, we were stuffed and half asleep from food and wine, but, although it might not look like much from the picture below, the chocolate orange dessert was really amazing, and so we found some room for it.

Happy customers! We more or less slept on the journey back to Ealing. But very much enjoyed our tasty jaunt to Peckham!

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

10 years have passed since our Uni crowd started at the University of Reading. It seems crazy that it was so long ago, while, at the same time feeling like so long ago I was at Uni...anyway, it was high time we returned to Reading to reunite! And we pretty much acted like we were still 20 years old...

Some of us might be approaching 30 mark, but we know how to party still!